Summary

Tim Doroey, author of the raucous, raw-edged, hilariously bent literary joy-ride, Florida Roadkill, now invites you back to his Sunshine State--not the tourist-mecca peneioner-paraclise the Chamber of Commerce would have you visit, but an Eden verdant with lost drug money; a center of lunatic, gravity, drawing fugitives, gangsters, losers, sociopaths and psychos of every flavor and degree to its tropic environs. And they all congregate in one sleazy, run-down motel perched on the Gulf of Mexico, just a short spitting distance from Tampa Bay.

Every room in the Hammerhead Ranch is host to a different schemer or slimeball. The Diaz Boys--cocaine duckpins who have survived only by the dumbest of luck--are stuck there with ten thousand hot, zebra-striped beepers. It's where Zargoza--ne Harvey Fiddlebottom--runs his bogus sweepstakes scam. Here undercover cops running sting operations on undercover cops are busted by undercover cops, runaway checkout girls turn into sex-crazed pot maniacs and a virgin hard-luck gigolo strikes out again.

And just down the row, the native, Serge A. Storms, is hiding out from the Florida "heat"--("you go and do a little spree killing and they never let you forget it!")--and looking out for the silver briefcase stuffed with five million dollars that has become his raison detre ...along with the compulsive need to visit every sight of local interest in his beloved home state. And since Serge, has stopped keeping up with his meds, he is capable of wreaking more havoc than hurricane, Rolando-berto--the big wind gathering force offshore, just waiting for the opportunity to blow everything straight to hell.

Like Hiaasen on a razor juiced with Quentin Tarantino amphetamine, Tim Dorsey's Hammerhead Ranch Motel is a rapid-fire, over-the-top mix of dancing Chihuahuas dressed up to predict the, weather, druggedout Don Johnson impersonators and skydiving Hemingways, hateful two-ton deejays and octogenarian enforcers. It is hilarious and deranged, but this is Florida, after all--where a direct hit from a catastrophic hurricane is the least of your worries.

Author Notes

Tim Dorsey was born in Indiana in 1961. He received a B.S. in transportation from Auburn University in 1983. From 1983 to 1987, he was a police and courts reporter for The Alabama Journal. He joined The Tampa Tribune in 1987 as a general assignment reporter. He also worked as a political reporter in the Tribune's Tallahassee bureau and a copy desk editor. From 1994 to 1999, he was the Tribune's night metro editor. He left the paper in August 1999 to become a full time writer. He is the author of the Serge Storms series.

Booklist Review

Dorsey, the author of the hysterical romp Florida Roadkill [BKL Ap 15 99], is back with a sequel that continues and amplifies the manic energy, wild characters, and outrageous situations of the original. This outing follows the five million ill-gotten dollars last seen in the trunk of a Chrysler on its way to Tampa. Serge Storms, Florida history buff and psychopath, wants his loot back, but it proves to be elusive. The money passes through the hands of a con man, several incompetent thugs, and, finally, the owner of the Hammerhead Ranch Motel. Serge tracks each of them down, generally with homicidal results. In a narrative as complicated and interwoven as a Robert Altman film, the reader meets the irascible denizens of a luxury seniors' condo complex, a passive-aggressive private investigator, and Johnny Vegas, the Accidental Virgin. It's not stretching to claim that Dorsey does for the Florida demimonde of the 1990s what Damon Runyon did for the New York of the 1920s. Thankfully, he also leaves the ending open for a third adventure. George Needham

Publisher's Weekly Review

HWith this followup to Florida Roadkill, Dorsey places himself in the ranks of Laurence Shames and Carl Hiassen as a writer of hilarious, violent farces set in Florida. A loopy energy fills this A-ticket trip among the bridges, sailboats, seedy dives, dysfunctional families and drug deals of Tampa Bay. In the prologue alone, a college student falls through the glass dome of the Florida Aquarium; aged but feisty Mrs. Edna Ploomfield fights a gun battle with a shotgun-toting drug dealer; coitally challenged playboy Johnny Vegas has his Porsche flattened by a truck; and a man in a Santa Claus suit torches a car on the Sunshine Skyway Bridge before jumping into the sea. Later, we meet Lenny, inveterate pothead and sometime 'gator wrestler, whose exploits turn up in the Weekly Mail of the News World; Alabama-bred blonde Ingrid Praline, whose "giant Lolita package gave men hemorrhagic fever"; panicky pilot Bananas Foster; and many more zany characters. After Dorsey introduces a white Chrysler and a metal briefcase with $5 million in it, fans will not be surprised when demented killer Serge A. Storm of Florida Roadkill shows up, kicking off a long parade of crazies, most of whom end up in the motel of the title during a hurricane (and a VCR viewing of Key Largo) in the novel's wild finale. Until then, joke follows joke like a 50-car pileup, in a plot that can feel like a game of 52-pickup; it's as if Dorsey chopped up his narrative into one- and two-page segments, threw them on the floor and published them in the resulting nonorder. The story loops backwards and forward in time: halfway through the book, for example, come the scenes that set up the wild prologue. But Dorsey's temporal convolutions do not impede momentum: instead, they encourage readers to hang on for the ride. And a delightfully giddy ride it is, ending with the promise of more craziness to come. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Library Journal Review

Surge A. Stormes, a psychotic spree killer first introduced in Florida Roadkill (LJ 6/15/99), is back again, still tracking the $5 million in laundered drug money that took him on his first adventure. With his new sidekick, Lenny Lippowicz, a writer known for yellow journalism, Surge traces the money to the owner of the Hammerhead Ranch Motel in Tampa, where he settles in, waiting for the perfect opportunity to claim what he thinks is rightfully his. Off his medication and on a roll, Surge parties freely with local eccentrics, each with a personal agenda ranging from drug addiction to murder, as a hurricane builds force in the Gulf and takes deadly aim at the Tampa area. Twenty ruthless players together in a motel bar as a hurricane rages outside can only lead to an explosive climax. Fans of Florida Roadkill will certainly want this book. Meanwhile, readers take note: Surge is still out there, without the cool five million. Does this presage a second sequel?DThomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois Univ., Carbondale Lib. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.